Tuesday, February 12, 2019

I Wonder if That Was a Mutiny.


We had a very strange special Commission gathering tonight.  It had something to do with our attorney.  Here's how this came about.

Our attorney, John Herrin, reportedly told our manager, Krishan Manners, that he, John Herrin, would be leaving his firm soon.  This was maybe in the past two weeks.  But no one was supposed to say anything about it, and John wanted to wait until he told his firm that he was leaving to join another firm.  Apparently, that happened some time late last week, because on Friday, we received a letter from John's firm saying John was no longer with them, and we could choose to stay with the firm, and be represented by someone other than John, be represented by John at his new firm, or find another attorney altogether.  It was Krishan Manners who received this letter.  On Sunday (two days ago), tonight's special meeting was scheduled, and the purpose was to talk about our attorney situation, supposing that we have one.  It was never made clear by anyone why this special meeting had to be so precipitously soon (tonight).  And not only was a meeting called to talk about our (imagined?) attorney situation, but three resumes of firms were attached as backup, and they were the same resumes as the finalists from last year, when we hired John and his firm.  So it was made to appear that we were finding a new attorney.  But since our attorney didn't resign from representing us, and the firm of which he was a part when we hired him/them was still willing to provide regular legal counsel, we weren't without an attorney.  So why were we looking for one?  To recapitulate, why was it being made to look like we didn't have an attorney, and what was the rush to choose a new one?  All of us who delivered public comments posed those questions.  And the other thing we all addressed was the peculiar set-up involving preconclusions about any of this, a compilation of resumes, with no introductory discussion, and, as Mac Kennedy astutely observed, the fact that five Commissioners who supposedly had next to no information were there, and none of them looked at all perplexed.  It might have been Roxy Ross who uttered the "Sunshine" reference.

For Chuck Ross and me, there was one other concern.  Roxy Ross recalled that the vote to hire John Herrin and his firm had been 4-1 of the then Commission.  The one who didn't choose John was Tracy Truppman.  It has also been observed that on two known occasions, John has disagreed with Tracy about one thing or another.  One of those failures to heel was followed by Tracy's giving John a tongue lashing outside.  Tracy Truppman does not brook people disagreeing with her.  There's typically some form of hell to pay for an act like that.  So the additional question was whether Tracy was gunning for John, whom she had not chosen at the outset, and who had the nerve to disagree with her about something, in the same way, but for different reasons, that she was gunning for Sharon Ragoonan, whom she assassinated as a Village employee.  Tracy does that.  As best we can tell, there's a list of them now.

But the bottom line was that we felt that the whole scheme of tonight's meeting was ill-conceived, in part because no one knew or understood much of anything (which wouldn't matter to Tracy, if all she wants is to punish/replace John for disagreeing with her), and one of the reasons no one knew anything is that no one asked.  For example, as became clear as this meeting slogged on, no one knew about John's new firm, or what his old firm was prepared to do for us, and John had either not been told about this meeting, or had been told about it, and been told he was not welcome to attend.

It was an interesting, if painful, 40 minutes.  Almost all of the Commission, even including Betsy Wise and Jenny Johnson-Sardella, actually came to understand the disadvantage at which they had been placed.  And as much as Tracy tried unwaveringly to steer everyone's comments to some conclusion, which Tracy tried to put in their mouths, that we should find a new firm (any firm in the world that, let's say, doesn't include John Herrin), they actually resisted.  The leader in this resistance was Will Tudor.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella repeatedly "concurred" (her all time favorite word) with Will.  And Betsy Wise resisted the herding Tracy was trying to do, too.  So did Dan Samaria.

What the Commission finally decided was that it didn't have enough information, and that they should slow this process down.  Which is of course precisely what all of us tried to tell them.  Jenny Johnson-Sardella even mentioned having recognized the wisdom of some comment Barbara Kuhl made.  Obviously, these Commissioners are not allowed to say they were persuaded by anything Roxy Ross said or I said, and that's OK.  As long as they get it, it's not important whom they recognize for having helped them see straight.  Roxy had other insights and caveats, too, but Tracy refused to let her speak.  Ah, good old Tracy.  Raging and limited to the end.

Yes, it was a gross waste of 40 minutes, but it was interesting to watch what looked like actual independence and something like clear thinking.  It could be just a one off situation.  We may be back to Village government brain death very soon.  Or maybe not.  Can Tracy punish all four of them, without the cooperation of at least two of them?  It depends how she does it, or what she's got on them.


5 comments:

  1. The meeting simply didn't need to happen. With two days' notice and (initially, at least) no letter from the firm included with the announcement sent to BP residents, it seemed like an emergency meeting to hire a new attorney. Fact is, BP has a contract with a firm that employs a zillion attorneys covering every imaginable related practice area out of 15 offices. Our legal representation is fine for the time being. The attorney assigned to our account left, that's all. We're not exactly high and dry, which is what the urgent meeting on short notice would imply, particularly since the critical piece of info (the letter from the firm letting us know he left) wasn't part of the original notice sent to residents. Much ado about nothing and a total waste of time and resources. I asked, "Who called this meeting," which was not answered. Krishan did say something about tagging that meeting onto another because they were meeting anyway, but I never heard "who."

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    1. All absolutely correct. As a matter of normal procedure, in response to the "event," there was no reason to have had this quickly and messily slapped together meeting.

      But I, and Chuck, were focused on something else. That was the reference in the title of this post. Tracy grabbed what she thought was an easy opportunity to do what she probably was scheming to figure out how to do anyway, and it was to assassinate John Herrin as a Village employee. What I found interesting is that no one, not even Tracy's heretofore reliable girls, would go along with her...this time.

      Krishan does what Mama tells him to do. It happened there was another meeting onto which to attach this fiasco, but Mama would have told him to phony up something else anyway, even if the Code issues meeting hadn't happened to be then. She was salivating when Krishan got the letter on Friday, and she was het up to dump John.

      I'm very aware that many of us are fed up with the Tracy show, but I didn't realize that a significant part of the Commission might be, too. Dan can be partially manipulated, as we saw last night, but he's not on board. Will is falling away. But last night was the first I saw of the girls rebelling. They'll hear about it (they already have). It's just a question of whether they can keep some sense of reason. Jenny is unpredictable, because she just follows others. Usually that's Mama, but last night, it was Will. Betsy is going to have to figure out if she wants to bother to do her own thinking, and not simply choreograph her songs and dances in support of Mama. If she does, she'll actually have to work, which she may not want to do. And she'll be at the disadvantage of not knowing anything about anything that's going on. And who, other than Mama, is going to help her and clue her in? Krishan? She certainly won't seek advice from any of us, as Dan does. It was easy for her when all she had to do was stay on the leash, and go after anyone Mama told her was evil.

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    2. After watching the video a few things stand out to me.
      1) Tracy remained stubborn and stupid by refusing to admit that John Herin exists, is alive well and able to continue to serve as the attorney: He is the same person at a different law firm. It’s obvious that Tracy has no interest in keeping John as the Attorney, the change to a different law firm was the opportunity to pounce, and boy did she.

      2) No one has provided any reason why we should make a change and the only one that seemed prepared was Tracy, the remaining four elected officials appeared not to have been prepared for this meeting. However, I think that Betsy and possibly Jenny were faking it. (Both of them indicated they were reviewing documents, how, when and why did they get those documents between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday or were they preparing beforehand? Rox, made a public records request for those documents, she has received nothing to date.) If they moved forward with Tracy’s plans in the face of those that spoke against the hastily called meeting that seemed like the Attorney had resigned and they needed to hire an Attorney yesterday, with no discussion or explanation as to why we should change to another Attorney, it would be obvious that this was a scheme cooked up by Tracy and colluded with by Betsy and Jenny, so those two punted.

      3) In the end nothing was decided, so by default Grey Robinson must still be the BP law firm, not that the majority of the Commission stated this (Only Will and possibly Jenny by concurring with him) I’m just making a logical conclusion to a meeting that didn’t have one.

      Here’s the link to the video, it’s still not posted to the web site.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu0JJdHvGsA

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  2. We were out of town so weren't at the meeting. Just watched it last night. Wow - that was quite a performance by Tracy. She was so desperate to convince everyone we literally had no attorney! The Big Lie as they call it! I watched the whole meeting and still can't figure out what if any conclusion was reached.

    What really stood out to me though was the ONE AND ONLY (pardon the caps) Code Officer subbing for the Village Clerk. And - according to the Manager's report she did so last week also. It seems they have given up on filling the 2nd code officer position. The excuse being salary - even though at one of our Code Board meetings Krishan said he wouldn't be afraid to go to the commission to ask for more money. So much for that promise. That they would pull the ONE AND ONLY code officer to do anything but code cements what we already know about this commission and administration. Code is rock bottom of their priorities. Which begs the question - why spend anymore time and money on that overblown driveway/swale ordinance. We clearly have no interest in fully and completely enforcing the codes we have. Why add to it?

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    1. The code officer was conscripted by Tracy to write a new Code, so Tracy would appear to be accomplishing something. But, as you point out, Tracy won't let the code officer or the Village enforce Codes anyway, so what's the point of having new ones? And the code officer has to have something to do, since Tracy won't let her enforce the Codes.

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